Have you ever wondered:

If science can explain spirituality and how various spiritual practices work?

Does spirituality fix human problems?

Why all human cultures have developed spiritual practices?

How does science explain the enlightened states that are reported by some spiritual paths?

A forthcoming book, Spirituality Explained, will suggest credible scientific answers to all of these questions (and more)! Although the working title of this book makes a very bold claim, the ideas in this book have been presented to a significant number of people from various related disciplines (in 30 different presentations). Positive feedback indicates wide agreement that these ideas actually do explain spirituality in a new and very scientific way. This explanation of spirituality contains no “spirits.”

The Author

Frank Heile, the author of Spirituality Explained, holds a Ph.D. in Physics and considers himself to be an atheist. He has been doing a number of different spiritual practices (with positive results) for many years(About).

Frank’s Upcoming Speaking Events

Frank has submitted an abstract to The Science of Consciousness Conference in Tucson, Arizona, on April 2-7, 2018. This will be updated when confirmed to reflect event details, including when and where Frank will be presenting.

To receive infrequent emails about the website, the book and upcoming events

Preview of Spirituality Explained

The following videos and PDFs are the most up-to-date, complete and easiest way to get a preview of the contents of the forthcoming book.

Latest Video!

Here is the video of the 43-minute talk Frank gave at the San Francisco Mensa Regional Gathering in Emeryville, CA, on Nov 19th, 2017. This video fully integrates Attention Schema Theory (AST) with the three-agent model. AST was proposed by the Princeton neuroscientist, Michael Graziano as a model that explains the subjective experience of awareness. AST provides both an awareness model and a self-awareness model for each of the three agents which gives the most compelling explanation of spirituality so far! You can either watch the full 43-minute video, or you can watch some or all of the 7 individual short videos (below) that make up the full video.

Click below to watch the full 43-minute video:

The individual short videos that comprise the original 43-minute video are:

After each video completes, click the “Next Video” button to view the next video.

Click the following button to view or download the PDF of the PowerPoint slides used in this video. Some of the ideas that were expressed verbally during the presentation have been added to this PDF in blue text. In addition, some new ideas were included that wouldn’t have fit in the time constraints on the presentation.

The quickest introduction to these ideas is from the single page poster presented at the Stanford Neurosciences Institute Symposium in October 2017. This poster has the clearest and most compelling explanation of the core ideas from the current three agent model. The (unreadable) image below shows the layout of the original poster as presented. If you click on the image you will get a very readable 3 page PDF that contains the (slightly modified) content of that poster.

Click below to expand and read the PDF:

14-Minute Interview Video:

The following 14-minute video was created by a two-person documentary video production team at Three Bridges West. They interviewed Frank for an hour in August 2017 and this video is the result. This is an excellent and easy to understand explanation of the core ideas in this model that explains spirituality:

Click below to play the video:

Science and Nonduality Conference 2017:

The following 22-minute video was recorded at Frank’s talk at the Science and Nonduality Conference in San Jose, CA, on Oct 20, 2017. This was the first talk where Frank began to talk about Attention Schema Theory combined with the three-agent model. The SF Mensa Talk on Nov 2017 (above) is the talk that fully incorporates Attention Shema Theory with the three-agent model.

Click the following button to view or download the PDF of the PowerPoint slides used in this video. Some of the ideas that were expressed verbally during the presentation have been added to this PDF in blue text. In addition, some new ideas were included that wouldn’t have fit in the time constraints on the presentation.